Ham Radio Tips for new hams - The new solar cycle, resources and what to expect. 

Thanks. Very informative with clear explanation. De 9W8CH

300 years old? 😄

@@RESISTAGE Five cycles would be about 55 years.

Humans had very little electrical infrastructure when the Carrington Event struck. A similar coronal mass ejection toward our planet would be devastating today. Fortunately much of the internet infrastructure has switched from cable to fiberoptics but we'd tak a huge hit to power generation, power distribution and satellites used for GPS and various communications. There has been some modeling recently using some heavy duty math that might indicate that Solar Cycle #25 might be particularly strong, and some space weather boffins believe the Earth is overdue for a major CME. The way 2020 has been, I'm half expecting a CME, an extinction event asteroid, and the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano in 2021.

I was using my doublet up as an inverted V. Once you skip though, polarization no longer matters. The bounced signal comes back differently.

It was back in the spring I think. I used that QSO as the opening on my video about further thoughts on the doublet, I think.

@@loughkb Thanks for the reply Kevin, I've posted a screenshot of this video with the card in the background on one of our local ham groups here in South Africa, very very cool indeed. 73 and thanks for the GREAT videos. Have a wonderful festive season and good DX

A bit of both.

As I recall from reading about it years ago, the D layer moves up and down in altitude from night to day.

The D layer is active during the day and essentially disappears at night. It absorbs radio signals at frequencies generally below 10MHz during the day. That's why during the day, you hear your local town's AM stations,but at night you hear out of state stations. That's primarily due to D layer absorption, but also due to solar noise during the day. If you are in the path of a solar eclipse, and you listen on 40m or 80m, you can hear semi long haul stations during the time that totality passes over. It's a pretty unique experience. Once the eclipse has passed, the band goes right back to normal propagation. One other aspect, I think the D layer will reflect some signals on 80 and 40 if they are high angle of radiation. So on 40, for instance, you can run a statewide net here in Colorado during the day and Pueblo can hear Ft Collins (about 190 miles), but not much further. At night, without the help of the D layer, they skip zone isn't possible. Btw, FT8 mode is a really fascinating way to watch the band conditions change.

I'd say it should track with regular old propagation.. If the mirror is there, what angle the light hits it doesn't matter too much, it gets reflected. :-)

We're at the very beginning of the current one. It will develop over the coming years.

@@loughkb I can't wait, Nov 2020 was a teaser

Oddly shaped head, actually. ;-)